Irresistible: Dodger Fan Succumbs to Nats

The Washington Nationals’ Howie Kendrick celebrates after a grand slam against the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 5 of the National League Division Series, October 9, 2019, in Los Angeles.

“What’s the most powerful thing in the world?” Tyrion Lannister asked in the closing episode of Game of Thrones. “A story.”

Well, sometimes. Other times, not, as Stalin pointed out when he asked how many divisions the Pope had.

But if ever there was a sports story with the power to sweep away all reservations, it’s that of the Washington Nationals, whose World Series victory last night culminated a story that’s all but irresistible.

I can say that with some authority, as I’ve been a Nats resister for some time. Nothing against them, but having spent nearly the entire second half of the 20th century in Los Angeles, I’m first and foremost a Dodger fan. The team brought big-league ball to L.A. when I was eight, changing my life for the better. Sandy Koufax was my boyhood deity, and that’s as close as I’ve ever come to a theistic perspective.

So I was rooting for the Dodgers when the Nats came from behind in the final game of their postseason playoff with L.A. and moved on to play the Cardinals and then the Astros. But after a team comes from behind again and again (and again and again), snatching victory from defeat just when you think they’re goners, it’s impossible not to be swept up in their story.

The Greeks knew this, albeit in a darker mode: The key to most of their tragedies was peripeteia, the sudden reversal of fortune, as when Oedipus discovers—well, you know that story, his own hubris engendering one helluva reversal of fortune. The Nats brought about their own peripeteia, too, not through hubris but through grit and ability and mid-season acquisitions. But by adhering to the laws of Greek drama—establishing one narrative (they’re losing! they’re toast!) and reversing it in the final innings (they’re up! how’d that happen?!)—and repeating this story damn near every time they took the stage, their tale finally became irresistible.

Washington was already united in its loathing of Trump; today, it’s united in something far more joyful.